By this author
Taking care
Society
My mother-in-law is bracing herself for loss. As moving day approaches, appetite and sleep have deserted her. She is shrinking in size. Her voice is going. The family, rallying to help, creep back and forth like cat burglars wrapping keep-sakes that rightfully …
Liquid handcuffs
Society
The methadone program at 40
Heart to heart
Society
My sister is in town, on leave from her burn-out job and hankering for family. We both work in health provision, which is to say, we serve (in different uniforms) at the great community welfare table. She manages a team of crisis counsellors; I hand out …
Ghost writers
Society
This time last year, I roamed through the over-furnished rooms of Katherine Mansfield’s birthplace house in Tinakori Road, Te Puakitanga, Wellington. Whenever I enter into one of these strange transactions I wonder what is missing in me, or perhaps …
Golden eye
Society
One year, in the middle of December, I received an unexpected Christmas card. Inside, the message read: “Felix and I are both marvellously well. All his former medical issues are now settled with diet and Alexander Technique. Felix felt you …
Croakers
Society
When Michael Jackson’s heart stopped beating on 25 June, he was lean, only 50 years old, and sufficiently fit to lay down enough of his trademark stage moves to refute rumours about advanced physical deterioration. Even before the first ambiguous cause-of-death …
Endnotes
Society
I went to a funeral in early December. In the tropical heat, mourners stood waiting in the shade of the portico, some staring down at the photograph on the single sheet of paper that carried the bare facts of Eddie's life and death, others fanning themselves …
Macbeth on Monday
Culture
For nearly 15 years, on the Monday nights I'm in town I've driven to a house at a nearby beach where a group of people (all women, although we've had men in the past) meet to read Shakespeare. At least five times in the cycle of tragedies we've tackled …
Running dogs
Society
The legal trade behind the manufacture of methamphetamines
‘Selling Sickness’ by Ray Moynihan & Alan Cassels
arts
Ray Moynihan has been pursuing the pharmaceutical giants for more than a decade, first with his TV series and book Too Much Medicine? and now – in collaboration with Canadian researcher Alan Cassels – in a new assault that might just draw blood. In …
